Paul Epworth

Pop music has greater power to change people and to affect people because it's a universal language. You don't have to understand music to understand the power of a pop song.

One of the funny things of being a producer, you have these fleeting, intense relationships with people, and they go off to global megastardom, and you don't see them.

I've always tried to stay behind the scenes, and I intend to keep it that way.

I like involved projects. I'm driven by the idea of characters and the song-cycle form is similar to a musical.

Another thing that freaks me out is time. Time is like a book. You have a beginning, a middle and an end. It's just a cycle.